My very first E3

Last week I had the pleasure of attending my first E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo), which also happens to be the first game convention I've attended.

For those of you who may have missed my previous post, I now work for Jesse Cox who was kind enough to invite me to spend Wednesday at E3 with him. Technically I was working, but that hardly mattered; I was absolutely delighted just to be there and experience everything I could in good company.

When we first arrived, Jesse had an appointment with EA to play a session of Battlefield 4. As appealing as the Battlefield series is for some, they are not particularly my style so I found my attention drifting over to the huge screen projecting trailers for EA’s new and upcoming games. It was about this time I realized I have not finished playing the previous Dragon Age games and made a silent mental note to do so. I'm a really big fan of chronological order and I want to experience them before I move on to the new title, Dragon Age: Inquisition.

After EA, we started to wander and ended up running into two of The Warp Zone guys, Davis and Shroeder, who were waiting in line at Disney Infinity to receive complimentary figurines. They were kind enough to let us cut in line with them (I totally owe them a favor).

Disney Infinity utilizes collectible figurines that are synthesized into the game when placed on an Infinity base, allowing for characters from Disney and Pixar films to interact and go on adventures within their own universe in play set mode and without in toy box mode. The Starter Pack edition of the game is bundled with three figurines (Jack Sparrow, Sully and Mr. Incredible) and an Infinity Base. The Infinity Base has two round spots to place figurines, and a hexagonal spot to place world discs. When the figurines are placed on the Infinity Base, the characters are imported into the game, while world discs unlock play sets.


To receive our complimentary figurines we stepped up to a screen and a Disney representative pressed a large red button. A random character was selected and distributed much like a vending machine. I received a Lone Ranger set, including the Lone Ranger, Tonto and a power disc. Immediately a Disney employee told me that was exceptionally rare and wanted to take a photo of me to post to their twitter feed. Jesse also gave me his character which turned out to be Mater from Cars. As someone who grew up watching Disney movies and visiting Disneyland on a regular basis I am going to love this game to pieces.

Jesse's next appointment was with CD Projekt RED to preview alpha gameplay of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. The team kept reminding us that this was alpha footage and they seemed slightly chagrined. This must be proof that we are our own worst critics, because they had nothing to be embarrassed about. Even in its "raw" form, the parts of the game they showed us were far better than many other new games currently available in their finished form. The Witcher series has been climbing on my list of games to play and this presentation really increased my desire to play the first two before the third is released. Geralt's attitude, the music and gameplay immediately resonated with me. It's incredibly impressive how involved the process of monster hunting is. For example, in order to eliminate older and tougher foes, you have to track them and learn their weaknesses, then take out their foundations before beginning the actual fight or face the consequences. Included in our goodie bags were codes for The Witcher and The Witcher 2 on GoG, I’ve downloaded The Witcher and will start playing it tonight!


After The Witcher 3, we made our way to the Last of Us demonstration area. If you play through the entire demo you receive a shirt that looks exactly like one of the shirts Ellie wears in the game, no logo branding at all, it’s fabulous! What was not so fabulous was how deeply my pride was damaged trying to maneuver the camera controls while so many looked on. I am very used to playing on my computer where you use me mouse to look around and aim. Needless to say the person working my station took pity on me and gave me a shirt when we had to leave for an appointment and I was still trying to struggle through the last minutes of the demo. Oh the pain and embarrassment…


We rushed over to the next appointment at Bethesda and made it just in time for the presentation, but not in time for seats. You will never find me playing The Evil Within, let me tell you! It looks so twisted and suspenseful. Wolfenstein: The New Order looked like a lot of fun though! Who wouldn’t want to use every type of arsenal at their disposal to destroy Nazis? I was thinking that would be more of a male oriented game based on the previous Wolfenstein games and perhaps I’m not your average girl, but there was something about it that made me want to play. I think it was probably a cutscene they showed us on a train with a psychotic Nazi woman and her boytoy that very much reminded me of the tense "Who am I?" scene in Inglorious Basterds, oh and did I mention killing Nazis?



After they released us from the pressroom, we were able to sit down and play twenty to thirty minutes of Elder Scrolls Online. Hello new addiction! I wondered how they were going to approach taking the Elder Scrolls and transitioning them into a workable MMO, but I was completely impressed with the conversion. Something that stood out from other MMOs that I enjoyed was how the interface changes when you speak to an individual NPCs that is related to the quest in some way. The character you're speaking to is brought into the foreground with different conversation options, much like the way you speak to NPCs in other elder scrolls games.


Jesse then asked if there was anything else I really wanted to try out or do before and I knew without a doubt that I wanted to try out Transistor, a game in development by the same company (Supergiant Games) that created Bastion. I loved Bastion for it’s narrator, music and art style. They’ve brought these elements back for Transistor, with an intriguing red headed female protagonist. The new gameplay techniques were really fun to try out, with specific moves and combinations depending on the number or type of enemy you face. I really didn't want to stop playing and I can't wait until it releases next spring.


All in all, I had a fabulous time, but I did feel completely overwhelmed with my first experience and not really knowing what to expect. I can’t wait to attend future conventions with Jesse and make myself more useful (as well as feed my insatiable enthusiasm for games).